What is a common parenting method that is actually ab use in your opinion?

[Silent_cries]

Puni shing and/or getting ang ry at their kid s for getting ba d grade s in school. It is horr ifyingly common from what it seem s, but still ab use imo. Putting that kind of pre ssure on a child can im possibly be healthy for them. I really disl ike parent s who think s everything evolve s around good grade s and a well paid education. No t that society make s it any better...

 

[EvisceratedJester]

Corporal punishment. We already have decades of research consistently showing that it is both an ineffective disciplinary method in the long term and that the psychological effects of it are comparable to that of more widely recognized types of abuse. Despite this, people still defend it, even on this site. I don't understand why people will claim to be against child abuse and will talk about protecting the children while still trying to advocate for abusive disciplinary methods like corporal punishment.

Some other common parenting methods that are just forms of normalized abuse include the silent treatment, yelling and screaming at children, not allowing them a meal (think of the classic "no dinner for you" thing), and locking children outside of the house. Child abuse is still very normalized, it's just that we like to label it as "discipline". Most people don't care about the well-being of children, hence why you can present them with decades of research and they'll still not give a shit. Children are little human-beings who need to be treated with respect and compassion. We need to start taking the time to listen to them and try to be understanding of them. We need to take into consideration the fact that we are dealing with a vulnerable demographic, so any hostility that we show them at such a young age can impact them for the rest of their lives.

 

[EyesOfNight]

Using punishment as a learning tool. It only teaches what a human should not do at best and leads to learnt hopelessness. This is absolutely not enough to build up a functioning human being.

 

[1MiserableGuy]

Putting them in public or private school. No worse damage can be done to a child than that.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

Lashing children with a whip/belt/stick. Where I grew up hitting your kids is normalized and expected as part of parenting, it is also acceptable to use corporal punishment in schools there for whatever reason. Anyone who doesn't hit their children is viewed as a bad parent and a wimp, so many parents even make a show out of beating their kids in public if they act up, in order to receive validation from strangers.

I had PTSD from sexual abuse and my family was too stupid to figure out what was going on with me, so every time I was afraid of being around medical staff or going to doctor's appointments as a young child, I would get beaten with the belt as a punishment for until there were welts on my legs. Whenever I ran off out of fear or cried, I would get beaten with the belt over it, or sometimes a thin stick/rod. This only stopped around the time I started puberty, especially because my relatives would yank my pants and underwear down so they could quite literally beat my ass.

I definitely would not be as neurotic as I am now and afraid of pain, if my family's idea of a big brained solution to any fearful outbursts or perceived acts of disobedience was something other than beating and hitting me. A small child does not understand why they're being hit, they only learn to associate the pain they feel with whatever behavior is causing them to be physically harmed, and they want to avoid getting that punishment again. Sure, children may avoid these behaviours as a consequence of that fear conditioning, but it has harmful knockdown effects.

 

[Saturn_]

The mentality that you can treat your children like garbage in any way because it's discipline. When a spouse, acquaintance, friend, pet, ANYONE else makes a mistake, it's not socially acceptable to verbally degrade them, destroy their belongings, be violent towards them, or anything like thar. It isn't deeply engrained in societal beliefs that this will correct their mistakes or bad behavior. Why is it suddenly different when it's your child?

 

[derpyderpins]

Using punishment as a learning tool. It only teaches what a human should not do at best and leads to learnt hopelessness. This is absolutely not enough to build up a functioning human being.

Yeah it's already been covered but I wanted to say yelling/screaming/anything meant to strike fear into the child can have a similar effect to hitting them. Anything that builds in a natural anxiety or a fear of failure (be it academics, social, extracurriculars, self-expression, etc.) is abusing them, and that comes from being afraid of the punishment at home.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I think an uncommonly mentioned form of neglect is repeatedly being late to pick up your child from places such as school or any extracurricular activity.

Both my parents were really sloppy with keeping time so they were often always late to pick me up from school since it was too far for me to walk and I went to a private school so we had no bus.

I feel like this might explain some of my issues with building relationships and feeling neglected all the time. I remember so many times where my parents really pushed the acceptable limit in how late they could be in picking me up and being the last one there without even having like a smartphone or something back then was pretty cruel in retrospect. At the time I just found it annoying but now I see how it could have caused me to develop such anxiety that still persists to this day.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

I think an uncommonly mentioned form of neglect is repeatedly being late to pick up your child from places such as school or any extracurricular activity.

I do think that there is a bit more nuance to be had with this, since a lot of parents don't mean to be late. My mom used to pick me up late from school a lot due to work, for example. A lot of parents are late because they have no choice.

 

[LilysAngel]

"The silent treatment."

Honestly a form of emotional neglect.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I do think that there is a bit more nuance to be had with this, since a lot of parents don't mean to be late. My mom used to pick me up late from school a lot due to work, for example. A lot of parents are late because they have no choice.

True, but my school also had this thing just to ease this issue called an "extended care" program where you could pick up your kids as late as 6 or 7 pm if you paid for it. At first my parents wouldn't pay for it so they'd show up late and I wouldn't be allowed to participate in any of the activities. Then when they were finally forced to pay for it, my parents would still show up late in picking me up from the late pickup service.

Once or twice is honestly fine but when it's happening constantly it creates issues of feeling neglected that have still persisted today even as an adult. I doubt this is the only form of neglect I've received since I also remember being left home alone or lost in malls a lot but I have no idea if those affected me much either.

 

[Jiyuurakka]

This is something common not only among parents, but people in general as well. The method of 'pretending as if nothing happened.' Pretending as if that fight never happened, that moment never took place, those emotions never existed in reality, this conversation didn't actually happen, that event never transpired, etc. This behaviour is very hard to pinpoint, because its somewhat of an unspoken rule to ignore things that are seemingly out of a person's control. This isn't any normal neglect though, this is willful neglect, parents who are not emotionally equipped to raise children and who are very aware of that very fact, yet do so anyway purely for self-interest.

I would imagine it's very heartbreaking for a child to have parents who act like bystanders.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

True, but my school also had this thing just to ease this issue called an "extended care" program where you could pick up your kids as late as 6 or 7 pm if you paid for it. At first my parents wouldn't pay for it so they'd show up late and I wouldn't be allowed to participate in any of the activities. Then when they were finally forced to pay for it, my parents would still show up late in picking me up from the late pickup service.

Once or twice is honestly fine but when it's happening constantly it creates issues of feeling neglected that have still persisted today even as an adult. I doubt this is the only form of neglect I've received since I also remember being left home alone or lost in malls a lot but I have no idea if those affected me much either.

Same, but at the time when I was in it it was free. I didn't go into it until around grade 4. My mom used to be late for pickup but I never really felt neglected tbh.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

Same, but at the time when I was in it it was free. I didn't go into it until around grade 4. My mom used to be late for pickup but I never really felt neglected tbh.

I didn't think much of it either but I've been told I have a lot of signs that show I've been neglected which I found weird since I never felt that was an issue for me so I'm trying to piece together what could have caused these feelings in me even though I never actually felt neglected as a child. Even when I was left home alone I had the television to raise me so it never bothered me and getting lost always felt like more of an adventure so I genuinely have no idea where else these feelings of neglect and abandonment could have come from.